GC 76mm (Sov) vs Ketza (Ketza Welcome)

[76mm]

Flaviusx, you've mentioned art divs several times now, but how do you deploy them? Attached to an army? To a front? Stavka? How many per army/front? Realitically, how many should I try to include in an attack?

[76mm]

I forgot to post an important milestone: finally reached 7 million men this turn. About 200k men in the pool, along with almost a million armament points.

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

Flaviusx, you've mentioned art divs several times now, but how do you deploy them? Attached to an army? To a front? Stavka? How many per army/front? Realitically, how many should I try to include in an attack?

Depends on the situation. I've gone up to a half dozen or more on really tough defenses. (Say, city busting.) Generally a couple will do the job on a single unit stack in non urban terrain, but I'm not afraid to throw more than that if the guns are available.

As for attachments, this depends on you strategic situation. I prefer to concentrate as many guns as possible on a limited sector of the front that I want to bust wide open. So it's up to you to decide what that is, and what is quiet, and having made that decision, pile on the God of War. This is a strategic asset so there's no cookie cutter attachment rule here. You definitely don't want to just spread them out evenly across the front.

[76mm]

BTW, I couldn't get myself to pull back the airbases twenty hexes from the frontline, that is too far and might leave my guys exposed. But I did pull them back maybe 10-15 hexes, hopefully the German fighters will be less effective at that range. What do the air war gurus say?

[randallw]

The good German fighter planes can still reach you; haven't checked the database lately so i'm not sure if stukas reach out as far as 15 hexes.

[TulliusDetritus]

Hmm, and leaving let's say an EMPTY (staging) air base near the front would not do the trick? The air thing is way too abstracted. I'm not sure I understood everything [:)]

[TulliusDetritus]

76mm, you had mentioned (if I remember correctly) that you had not assigned AA units to your Air Command HQs. These units should make a BIG difference. Do attach them.

[76mm]

TD, thanks for the tips. I generally don't use "staging" airbases, they seem kinda gamey. I fill my airbases up with planes, dammit!

Thanks for the confirmation re the AA, I added a few to key air HQs last turn, will add a few more. Probably a good use of a couple of AP.

randallw, thanks for the tip re the fighter ranges, I will see what happens this turn, and if my losses are still too high, will pull back a bit further.

[76mm]

Sorry for the long delay in posting. Was on vacation, and since getting back we've done a few rather boring turns in quick succession, so I didn't really have time to update between turns, and there was little to report anyway.

At this point, I think I am waiting for Turn 64 from him; as far as I can tell, he as dispersed his panzers across the front; in any event, he has not taken any offensive action other than local attacks to push back single hexes. In many parts of the front, there is a "no man's land" between our two fortified lines. I have been trying to advance troops into these hexes, but since they are unfortified he easily pushes them back. But I think the losses are in my favor, generally I lose less than twice what he does, which I think is good for me.

Let's see, what else? My plan losses continue to be staggering, generally 10x or even 20x...I can't really figure it out.

The only real "action" has been in the Crimea, where I have been slowly pushing him back. He has significantly reinforced the Crimea, however, including with two PDs, so not sure how much more I'll gain until I bring in signficant reinforcements.

Elsewhere on the front, his fortifications basically preclude most attacks; I've tried a few over the last few turns but most have failed. But I've got a little operation planned for next turn which could have some success, however limited.

Generally, slowly slowly creating rifle corps and building 1-2 rifle divs per turn to fill in holes in my armies.

[76mm]

Just finished turn 64. Game has been pretty much stalemated for the last several turns. I literally can't attack along most of the line due to his fortifications. We've been trading blows in the Crimea, but without more reinforcements, or at least more rifle corps, I won't be able to do much more down there.

In an effort to keep things from being too boring, I shifted the Shock Front from the far south, where it beat back the last German attack, to the north, around Lake Ilmen, which has been fairly quiet:



I'm not expecting any dramatic results here, but wanted to accomplish a couple of objectives:
1) keep him guessing about what I'm up to;
2) buff up the Shock Front's experience with some victories;
3) test a strategy in which I use a couple of powerful fronts to blast through the initial line or two of fortifications, and then pull the fronts back and let the basic line troops continue the offensive against unfortified German troops. I would then redeploy the powerful fronts and repeat the process. The tempo can be gradually increased as I create more and more rifle corps.

Any thoughts on this approach? I'm still creating 1-2 rifle corps per turn and have thus far created all of them in the Shock and Reserve Fronts and the Crimea. It will take me several more turns to complete this process, and then I'll start buffing up another army in some other front with rifle corps.

My losses have been unsustainably high the last few turns, but this should change, I hope, as I create more rifle corps. So far, where my rifle corps go, victory follows, but I need a lot more to really do much good. It could be my imagination, but it seems like his CVs are gradually dropping across the front, although I can't take advantage of it until I can push him out of his strong forts.

[76mm]

Ho hum. Just finished Turn 65, did a few more attacks in the same general area as last time; either next turn or the turn after I will pull these fronts off the line and send them elsewhere. My recon does not seem to be working very well, I can't get a good panzer count, which is a little worrying, although I have seen panzer divisions scattered and there across the front, so I don't think they are too concentrated. I still think he has his eyes on the south, however, so want to reinforce there sooner rather than later.

In the next few weeks I also want to think up the "big plan" for a winter offensive.

[Encircled]

If he pulls all of his motorised and Panzer divisions off the Front, even very extensive recon won't be able to find them all.

His recon is much better, so if you are obviously weak somewhere, with a good rail net on the German side, then thats where he will be coming from.

[76mm]

Turn 66.

The boring summer campaign is offically over. I opened my turn and saw this:



I was pretty surprised by the number of panzer divisions he had involved in this attack, but I guess I should not have been surprised that I was surprised: for some reason, for the last two or three turns NO recon flights would fly in this area (got the "no recon assets or out of range" message), despite the fact that I had several recon squadrons only a few hexes away, in Rostov. I should have paid more attention to this problem and fixed it, but did not, and it definitely came back to bite me. This turn, I moved the airbase with the recon planes out of Rostov, and they could fly. I thought that airbases could be based in cities, but apparently not. Really cost me here.

Ketza did a good job of sucking me in here, forcing me back from initial hexes to destroy my forts, and then I'd move back into the unfortified hexes, which made his attack easier.

Another problem was that I've moved my reserves out of the area to conduct some pretty pointless attacks elsewhere, and did not replace them. Double-ooops.

That said, other than the encircled troops, which I'm sure to lose, this attack doesn't really bother me that much. I've got loads of reserves on the way, and I'm pretty sure they'll be able to slap around his attacking forces. In fact, if he is smart, he will quickly pull back to his start lines, because by next turn he'll be under attack by some lead elements of my reserves, and the turn after that he'll be under full-scale attack. Unless he does something unexpected. I kind of hope he keeps attacking east or southeast, I don't think I'll try to stop him much, at least initially.

Anyway, here is the situation at the end of my turn; as you can probably see, I don't want him curling up to the north, behind by line, and have deployed some reserves accordingingly:


Will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few turns, but again, so far I'm not very concerned.

On other fronts: my troops in the Crimea seem to be doing well against his troops; I've been slowly expanding my base around Sevestapol, this turn forcing him back from a fortified position (see the 6=45 unit). But in addition to the recon problem I've already mentioned, I have problems with the bombers in the Crimea. The screen shot below shows how many bombers I have in the area, only nine hexes from the German unit that I bombed. But I could only do one bombing mission, and after that, no bombers were available for some reason. I thought I should have been able to bomb it several times given how close it was to the Russian air base:



Finally, here is my production screen: lots of men and arm points in the pool, don't know what's keeping them from being deployed, but I think I should get a big bump in manpower soon:

[76mm]

Forgot to mention a few things:

1) I've never played this far in a GC before, so I don't know what weather to expect turn to turn, like playing with random weather, which is good. We're heading into the fall at this point, so I guess we'll get some mud soon, which also doesn't bode well for his attack.

2) Look at all of the interdiction attacks I had along the base of this attack, more than I expected. My interdiction setting was 100% for this turn, I've cranked it up to 300% for this turn to make it harder for him to execute move/attack plans.

3) I seem to have lots of planes in my pool, and need them in my air units! What's up with that?

[Encircled]

 I'd be wary about using the 300%.

 It could have been my incompetence, but anything over 150% I have had masses of air at one battle, and then none.

 

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Encircled

 I'd be wary about using the 300%.

It could have been my incompetence, but anything over 150% I have had masses of air at one battle, and then none.

hmmm, interesting, that would be particularly bad for interdiction...at this point I guess I'll just have to see how it works this time, because I've already sent the turn. Will try to post a screen showing the number of interdictions next turn.

[cpt flam]

to use your manpower pool, i think that you have to create/refit units
normal setting will let them around sixty per cent
no much reinforcement to use these men otherwise hope this can help

[76mm]

I've generally been creating a couple of divs per turn, and surely have lots of units on refit, although I'll have to check and maybe rotate some units in/out of refit, thanks.

[Encircled]

Rotating your units out of the front line makes a massive difference.

Takes a lot of time to do it properly, but well worth it.

[Tarhunnas]

ORIGINAL: Encircled

Rotating your units out of the front line makes a massive difference.

Takes a lot of time to do it properly, but well worth it.

Yes it does, but it is not enhancing my game experience having to move a lot of units one hex back and forth for no other purpose.